I’ve got a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 & Cambridge Soundworks FPS1500 (tried the following control panel settings: quadraphonic speakers, surround sound speakers, 5.1 surround sound speakers). Code is written in C# using VS2K5 Pro. The wave file is a stereo recording (I believe). The listener is positioned in the center of the window, w/ a forward vector of (0,1,0). I have the x- & y- coords of the source match the location of the mouse in the MouseMove event. The velocity is always set to (0,0,0) (I just want to hear the position of the source).

Here’s the "problem": while the sound plays in 3D, the strange part is that the rear speakers are invariably outputting the sound at a lower volume than the front speakers, even when the source (i.e., mouse) is behind the listener.

Question: Isn’t the position of the sound supposed to localize to the speakers? E.g., when the source is behind the listener, the front speakers should play the sound softer than the rear speakers?

yes it is localized to your rear speakers if the sound is behind you, but maybe you are comparing front center vs rears. Front center will be full volume, rears will be .7 each to simulate the ‘middle’ of the rears.

Apart from this it is just a set up issue. You are supposed to match the fmod speaker mode with the control panel’s speaker mode. You can do that easily by calling getDriverCaps to get the controlpanel’s speaker mode.